Downtown Portland: Before Flyover Mode

This is a quick and easy tip on how to switch to 3D Flyover Mode in the Maps App on your iPhone, iPad (Air, Mini), and iPod Touch. The Apple Maps app on iOS devices has greatly improved since it was announced a few years back. The Flyover feature is one of my favorites.

Flyover allows you to zoom in on certain cities and get a photographic 3D view of the city. It is really fun to explore new cities this way or to get a 3D birds eye view of your own city. There are dozens of cities that have this feature and Apple continues to add more each year.

Here is how to switch to 3D Flyover Mode quickly and easily on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. All you need to do is find your city (if it is included in the Flyover cities) or another city that you want to look at (Paris is one of my favorites).

Downtown Portland: After enabling Flyover Mode

Then, in the regular maps view mode you can either tap on the 3D buildings icon on the bottom of the screen just left of center or you can swipe up with 2 fingers on the screen. This is the easiest way to switch back and forth between Flyover mode and regular maps mode. Once you are in Flyover mode, then you can pinch to zoom, rotate with two fingers to pan around a building, and use one finger to move to a new area in the city.